The Homeric ghosts gibbered because they were ghosts; the Burgundian ghosts because they were confined to the Stygian coast, and could not cross the stream. For once the "classical allusions" are forced and inappropriate.] [314] [Byron's point is that at Morat 15,000 men were slain in a righteous cause--the defence of a republic against an invading tyrant; whereas the lives of those that fell at Cannæ and at Waterloo were sacrificed to the ambition of rival powers fighting for the mastery.] [iy] {255} ----_their proud land_ _Groan'd not beneath_----.--[MS.] [iz] {257} _And thus she died_----.--[MS.] [ja] _And they lie simply_----.--[MS. erased.] [jb] _The dear depths yield_----.--[MS.] [315] ["Haunted and hunted by the British tourist and gossip-monger, Byron took refuge, on June 10, at the Villa Diodati; but still the pursuers strove to win some wretched consolation by waylaying him in his evening drives, or directing the telescope upon his balcony, which overlooked the lake, or upon the hillside, with its vineyards, where he lurked obscure" (Dowden's _Life of Shelley_, 1896, p. 309). It is possible, too, that now and again even Shelley's companionship was felt to be a strain upon nerves and temper. The escape from memory and remorse, which could not be always attained in the society of a chosen few, might, he hoped, be found in solitude, face to face with nature. But it was not to be. Even nature was powerless to "minister to a mind diseased." At the conclusion of his second tour (September 29, 1816), he is constrained to admit that "neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, and beneath me" (_Life_, p. 315). Perhaps Wordsworth had this confession in his mind when, in 1834, he composed the lines, "Not in the Lucid Intervals of Life," of which the following were, he notes, "written with Lord Byron's character as a past before me, and that of others, his contemporaries, who wrote under like influences:"-- "Nor do words, Which practised talent readily affords, Prove that his hand has touched responsive chords Nor has his gentle beauty power to move With genuine rapture and with fervent love The soul of Genius, if he dare to take Life's rule from passion craved for passion's sake; Untaught that meekness is the cherished bent Of all the truly great and all the innocent. But who is innocent? By grace divine, Not otherwise, O Nature! are we thine, Through good and evil there, in just degree Of rational and manly sympathy." _The Works of W. Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 729.