Alfieri, before his dramatic genius had yet unfolded itself, used to pass hours, as he tells us, in this sort of dreaming state, gazing upon the ocean:--"Apres le spectacle un de mes amusemens, a Marseille, etait de me baigner presque tous les soirs dans la mer. J'avais trouve un petit endroit fort agreable, sur une langue de terre placee a droite hors du port, ou, en m'asseyant sur le sable, le dos appuye contre un petit rocher qui empechait qu'on ne put me voir du cote de la terre, je n'avais plus devant moi que le ciel et la mer. Entre ces deux immensites qu'embellissaient les rayons d'un soleil couchant, je passai en revant des heures delicieuses; et la, je serais devenu poete, si j'avais su ecrire dans une langue quelconque."] [Footnote 2: But a few months before he died, in a conversation with Maurocordato at Missolonghi, Lord Byron said--"The Turkish History was one of the first books that gave me pleasure when a child; and I believe it had much influence on my subsequent wishes to visit the Levant, and gave perhaps the oriental colouring which is observed in my poetry."--COUNT GAMBA's _Narrative_. In the last edition of Mr. D'Israeli's work on "the Literary Character," that gentleman has given some curious marginal notes, which he found written by Lord Byron in a copy of this work that belonged to him. Among them is the following enumeration of the writers that, besides Rycaut, had drawn his attention so early to the East:-- "Knolles, Cantemir, De Tott, Lady M.W. Montague, Hawkins's Translation from Mignot's History of the Turks, the Arabian Nights, all travels, or histories, or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, as well as Rycaut, before I was _ten years old_. I think the Arabian Nights first. After these, I preferred the history of naval actions, Don Quixote, and Smollett's novels, particularly Roderick Random, and I was passionate for the Roman History. When a boy, I could never bear to read any Poetry whatever without disgust and reluctance."] [Footnote 3: "It rained hard the next day, and we spent another evening with our soldiers. The captain, Elmas, tried a fine Manton gun belonging to my Friend, and hitting his mark every time was highly delighted."--HOBHOUSE'_s_ _Journey_, &c.]