The impact of that strong, vigorous nature--through his poems--brings, to the average reader, a sense of force, of brilliancy, of personality, of humanity (if gone astray), which exhilarates, which dashes away a thousand wordy memories of wordy verses, and puts in their place palpitating phrases that throb with life. An infinite capability for eloquent verse; an infinite capability for badnesses! We cannot root out the satanry from the man, or his books, any more than we can root out Lucifer from Milton’s Eden. But we can lament both, and, if need be, fight them. Whether closer British influence (which usually smote upon him, like sleet on glass)--even of that “Ancient Oratory” of Annesley--would have served to whiten his tracks, who shall say? Long ago he had gone out from them, and from parish church and sermon; his hymns were the _Ranz des Vaches_ on the heights of the _Dent de Jaman_, and the preachments he heard were the mellowed tones of convent bells--filtering through forest boughs--maybe upon the ear of some hapless Allegra, scathed by birth-marks of a sin that is not her own--conning her beads, and listening and praying! _Missolonghi._ It was in 1823, when he was living in Genoa--whither he had gone from Pisa (and before this, Ravenna)--that his sympathies were awakened in behalf of the Greeks, who since 1820 had been in revolt against their Turkish taskmasters. He had been already enrolled with those Carbonari--the forerunners of the Mazzinis and the Garibaldis--who had labored in vain for the independence and unity of Italy; and in many a burst of his impassioned song he had showered welcoming praises upon a Greece that should be free, and with equal passion attuned his verse to the lament--that “Freedom found no champion and no child Such as Columbia saw arise when she Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled.” How much all this was real and how much only the romanticism of the poet, was now to be proven. And it was certainly with a business-like air that he cut short his little _agaceries_ with the Lady Blessington, and pleasant dalliance with the Guiccioli, for a rallying of all his forces--moneyed or other--in the service of that cause for which the brave Marco Bozzaris had fallen, fighting, only three months before. It was in July that he embarked at Genoa for Greece--in a brig which he had chartered, and which took guns and ammunition and $40,000 of his own procurement, with a retinue of attendants--including his trusty Fletcher--besides his friends Trelawney and the Count Gamba. They skirted the west coast of Italy, catching sight of Elba--then famous for its Napoleonic associations--and of Stromboli, whose lurid blaze, reflected upon the sea, startled the admiring poet to a hinted promise--that those fires should upon some near day reek on the pages of a Fifth Canto of _Childe Harold_.