By the end of July he had finished Marino Faliero, and ere the close of the year the fifth canto of Don Juan.

Lord Byron had scarcely taken up his abode in Venice, when he began the fourth canto of Childe Harold, which he published early in the following year, and dedicated to his indefatigable friend Mr Hobhouse by an epistle dated on the anniversary of his marriage, "the most unfortunate day," as he says, "of his past existence.

No part of the work has more suggestive interest or varied power than some of the later cantos, in which Juan is whirled through the vortex of the fashionable life which Byron knew so well, loved so much, and at last esteemed so little.

[* See the sixth canto of the third book of the Faerie Queene, especially the second and the thirty-second stanzas; which, with his Hymnes of Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty, are evident proofs of Spenser's attachment to the Platonic school.

In this cry Cellini recognised the gibberish at the beginning of the seventh canto of Dante's "Inferno."

The story of the apparition in the sixteenth canto of Don Juan is derived from this family legend, and Norman Abbey, in the thirteenth of the same poem, is a rich and elaborate description of Newstead.

There is, perhaps, in the whole range of literature, no nobler homage to Art than that which is contained in the tenth and twelfth cantos of the "Purgatory," in which Dante represents the Creator himself as using its means to impress the lessons of truth upon those whose souls were being purified for the final attainment of heaven.

"The thirtieth canto of 'Purgatory.'

See his Mangiadore, Sanvittore, Natan, Raban, &c. at the end of the twelfth canto of the Paradiso.

Davallos made the poet his generous present in the October of the year 1513; and in the same month of the year following the Orlando was published as it now stands, with various insertions throughout, chiefly stories, and six additional cantos.

He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan.

In the eighth canto of the Inferno, the devils insolently refuse the poet and his guide an entrance into the city of Dis:an angel comes sweeping over the Stygian lake to enforce it; the noise of his wings makes the shores tremble, and is like a crashing whirlwind such as beats down the trees and sends the peasants and their herds flying before it.

So in those fine lines Write loyal cantos of contemned love Hollow your name to the reverberate hills there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for that which was to follow.

Nothing, for instance, has been said about the pastoral interludes which occupy a not inconspicuous place in the martial cantos both of the Orlando and the Gerusalemme.

Favete linguis!... Virginibus puerisque canto.