"Voici une esquisse du caractère que je manifestais dans les premières anneés de ma raison naissante. Taciturne et tranquille pour l'ordinaire, mais quelquefois extrêmement pétulant et babillard, presque toujours dans les extrêmes, obstiné et rebelle à la force, fort soumis aux avis qu'on me donnait avec amitié, contenu plutôt par la crainte d'être grondé que par toute autre chose, d'une timidité excessive, et inflexible quand on voulait me prendre à rebours." The resemblance, as Byron admits, "related merely to our apparent personal dispositions." Both were noble, both were poets, both were "patrician republicans," and both were lovers of pleasure as well as lovers and students of literature; but their works do not provoke comparison. "The quality of 'a narrow elevation' which [Matthew] Arnold finds in Alfieri," is not characteristic of the author of _Childe Harold_ and _Don Juan_. Of this stanza, however, Alfieri's fine sonnet to Florence may have been the inspiration. I have Dr. Garnett's permission to cite the following lines of his admirable translation (_Italian Literature_, 1898, p. 321):-- "Was Angelo born here? and he who wove Love's charm with sorcery of Tuscan tongue, Indissolubly blent? and he whose song Laid bare the world below to world above? And he who from the lonely valley clove The azure height and trod the stars among? And he whose searching mind the monarch's wrong, Fount of the people's misery did prove?"] [mv] {370} _Might furnish forth a Universe_----.--[MS. M.] [mw] _And ruin of thy beauty, shall deny_ _And hath denied, to every other sky_ _Spirits that soar like thine; from thy decay_ {_Still springs some son of the Divinity_} {_Still springs some work of the Divinity_}--[D.] _And gilds thy ruins with reviving ray_-- _And what these were of yore--Canova is to-day_.--[MS. M.] [433] [Compare "Lines on the Bust of Helen by Canova," which were sent in a letter to Murray, November 25, 1816-- "In this beloved marble view, Above the works and thoughts of man, What nature _could_, but _would not_, do, And Beauty and Canova can." In _Beppo_ (stanza xlvi.), which was written in October, 1817, there is a further allusion to the genius of Canova.] [mx] {371} _Their great Contemporary_----.--[MS. M. erased.]