I in his place, I would pass myself off as dead, and commence a new life as Mr. Smith, a worthy merchant of Lima."

So long as Byron remained in England he had refused to accept any pay for his writings, feeling that his position as a lord and a gentleman would be compromised by the acceptance of money. But having once reconciled himself to a contrary position, he soon becomes quite a grasping man-of-business, and will take nothing less than the highest prices for his

wares.

This decision is worth more than a passing mention, because for the first time in the history of English authorship a nobleman became brave enough to confess himself an author by profession. Authors of noble, even of royal rank, had written and published, but they had held themselves aloof from anything so sordid as money compensation. In England, Byron had given away his copyrights to impecunious friends, even while borrowing money for his own needs at extortionate terms from London usurers. In now deciding that he might and would accept the strong and steady stream of wealth pouring in from the sale of his works, and apply it to his own use in living according to his rank, he was acting in opposition to the prejudices of his order and to the sentiment of all English society. His long hesitation and pain preceding seem almost laughable now, but they serve to mark the great change of mental attitude in the

last hundred years. Murray's list of payments to the poet during the first five years of his Italian residence foots up to nearly $63,000. He spent, however, as royally as he earned, and in Italy, as later in Greece, a very large proportion of this amount was devoted to the cause of the liberty of the people.

VENICE

A FRAGMENT

'Tis midnight but it is not dark
Within thy spacious place, St. Mark!
The Lights within, the Lamps without,
Shine above the revel rout.

The brazen Steeds are glittering o'er
The holy building's massy door,
Glittering with their collars of gold,
The goodly work of the days of old
And the winged Lion stern and solemn
Frowns from the height of his hoary column,
Facing the palace in which doth lodge
The ocean-city's dreaded Doge.
The palace is proud but near it lies,
Divided by the Bridge of Sighs,'
The dreary dwelling where the State
Enchains the captives of their hate:

These they perish or they pine;

But which their doom may none divine:
Many have pass'd that Arch of pain,
But none retraced their steps again.

It is a princely colonnade!

And wrought around a princely place,
When that vast edifice display'd

Looks with its venerable face

Over the far and subject sea,

Which makes the fearless isles so free!
And 't is a strange and noble pile,
Pillar'd into many an aisle :
Every pillar fair to see,

Marble-jasper-and porphyry

The church of St. Mark - which stands hard by

With fretted pinnacles on high,

And cupola and minaret;

More like the mosque of orient lands,

Than the fanes wherein we pray,

And Mary's blessèd likeness stands.
VENICE, December 6, 1816.1

TO JOHN MURRAY

VENICE, November 25, 1816.

DEAR SIR, It is some months since I have heard from or of you I think, not since I left Diodati. From Milan I wrote once or twice; but have been here some little time, and intend to pass the winter without removing. I was much pleased with the Lago di Garda, and with Verona, particularly the amphitheatre, and a sarcophagus in a Convent garden, which they show as Juliet's: they insist on

1 First published in 1901, from a manuscript in possession of Mr. Murray, grandson of Byron's publisher.

"I was much pleased with Verona

and a sarcophagus

in a Convent garden, which they show as Juliet's: they insist on the truth of her history."

-See Letter to John Murray, p. 8.