_Of the familiar's torch, which seems to love_ _Darkness far more than light_.--[MS.] [61] {157}[Compare-- "Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider." _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza ii. lines 1-3, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 217, note 1.] [bm] _At once by briefer means and better_.--[MS.] [62] {158} In Lady Morgan's fearless and excellent work upon Italy, I perceive the expression of "Rome of the Ocean" applied to Venice. The same phrase occurs in the "Two Foscari." My publisher can vouch for me, that the tragedy was written and sent to England some time before I had seen Lady Morgan's work, which I only received on the 16th of August. I hasten, however, to notice the coincidence, and to yield the originality of the phrase to her who first placed it before the public. [Byron calls Lady Morgan's _Italy_ "fearless" on account of her strictures on the behaviour of Great Britain to Genoa in 1814. "England personally stood pledged to Genoa.... When the British officers rode into their gates bearing the white flag consecrated by the holy word of '_independence_,' the people ... '_kissed their garments_.'... Every heart was open.... Lord William Bentinck's flag of '_Independenza_' was taken down from the steeples and high places at sunrise; before noon the arms of Sardinia blazoned in their stead; and yet the Genoese did not rise _en masse_ and massacre the English" (_Italy_, 1821, i. 245, 246). The passage which Byron feared might be quoted to his disparagement runs as follows: "As the bark glides on, as the shore recedes, and the city of waves, the Rome of the ocean, rises on the horizon, the spirits rally; ... and as the spires and cupolas of Venice come forth in the lustre of the mid-day sun, and its palaces, half-veiled in the aërial tints of distance, gradually assume their superb proportions, then the dream of many a youthful vigil is realized" (_ibid_., ii. 449).] [63] [Compare _Marino Faliero_, act ii. sc. 2, line 110, _Poetical Works_, 901, iv. 386, note 3.] [64] {159} The Calenture.--[From the Spanish _Calentura_, a fever peculiar to sailors within the tropics-- "So, by a calenture misled, The mariner with rapture sees, On the smooth ocean's azure bed, Enamelled fields and verdant trees: With eager haste he longs to rove In that fantastic scene, and thinks It must be some enchanted grove; And in he leaps, and down he sinks." Swift, _The South-Sea Project_, 1721, ed. 1824, xiv. 147.]