The unsettled state of life he was from thenceforward thrown into, by the precarious fortunes of those with whom he had connected himself, conspired with one or two other causes to revive within him all his former love of change and adventure; nor is it wonderful that to Greece, as offering _both_ in their most exciting form, he should turn eagerly his eyes, and at once kindle with a desire not only to witness, but perhaps share in, the present triumphs of Liberty on those very fields where he had already gathered for immortality such memorials of her day long past. Among the causes that concurred with this sentiment to determine him to the enterprise he now meditated, not the least powerful, undoubtedly, was the supposition in his own mind that the high tide of his poetical popularity had been for some time on the ebb. The utter failure of the Liberal,--in which, splendid as were some of his own contributions to it, there were yet others from his pen hardly to be distinguished from the surrounding dross,--confirmed him fully in the notion that he had at last wearied out his welcome with the world; and, as the voice of fame had become almost as necessary to him as the air he breathed, it was with a proud consciousness of the yet untouched reserves of power within him he now saw that, if arrived at the end of _one_ path of fame, there were yet others for him to strike into, still more glorious. That some such vent for the resources of his mind had long been contemplated by him appears from a letter of his to myself, in which it will be recollected he says,--"If I live ten years longer, you will see that it is not over with me. I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing; and--it may seem odd enough to say--I do not think it was my vocation. But you will see that I shall do something,--the times and Fortune permitting,--that 'like the cosmogony of the world will puzzle the philosophers of all ages.'" He then adds this but too true and sad prognostic:--"But I doubt whether my constitution will hold out."