covered with viands and wines. And thus the most luxurious Court in Europe, after all its boasted refinements, was glad to return at last, by this singular contrivance, to the quiet and privacy of humble life.-Vie privée de Louis XV. ii. 43.

Between line 24 and line 25 were these lines, since omitted:
Hail, sweet Society! in crowds unknown,
Though the vain world would claim thee for its own.
Still where thy small and cheerful converse flows,
Be mine to enter, ere the circle close.
When in retreat Fox lays his thunder by,

And Wit and Taste their mingled charms supply;
When SIDDONS, born to melt and freeze the heart,
Performs at home her more endearing part;
When He, who best interprets to mankind
The winged messengers from mind to mind,
Leans on his spade, and, playful as profound,
His genius sheds its evening-sunshine round,
Be mine to listen; pleased yet not elate,
Ever too modest or too proud to rate
Myself by my companions.

They were written in 1796.

Page 73, line 3.

So thro' the vales of Loire the bee-hives glide,

An allusion to the floating bee-house, which is seen in some parts of France and Piedmont.

Page 73, line 10.

Caught thro' St. James's groves at blush of day;

After line 10, in the MS.

Groves that Belinda's star illumines still,

And ancient Courts and faded splendours fill.

See the Rape of the Lock, Canto V.

M

Page 74, line 8.

And, with the swallow, wings the year away!

It was the boast of Lucullus that he changed his climate with the birds of passage.

How often must he have felt the truth here inculcated, that the master of many houses has no home!

THE

VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS.

1812.

CHI SE' TU, CHE VIENI-?

DA ME STESSO NON VEGNO.

DANTE.

PREFACE.

THE following Poem (or, to speak more properly, what remains of it*) has here and there a lyrical turn of thought and expression. It is sudden in its transitions, and full of historical allusions; leaving much to be imagined by the reader.

The subject is a voyage the most memorable in the annals of mankind. Columbus was a person of extraordinary virtue and piety, acting, as he conceived, under the sense of a divine impulse; and his achievement the discovery of a New World, the inhabitants of which were shut out from the light of Revelation, and given up, as they believed, to the dominion of malignant spirits.

Many of the incidents will now be thought extravagant; yet they were once perhaps received

* The Original in the Castilian language, according to the Inscription that follows, was found among other MSS. in an old religious house near Palos, situated on an island formed by the river Tinto, and dedicated to our Lady of La Rábida. The Writer describes himself as having sailed with Columbus; but his style and manner are evidently of an after-time.