As it is, I must content myself with a short but eminently characteristic passage, written from Ferrarra, November 7, 1818:-- "The handwriting of Ariosto is a small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I should say, a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy of mind; that of Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there is a checked expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters into a smaller compass than one expected from the beginning of the word.
It is the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its own depth, and admonished to return by the chillness of the waters of oblivion striking upon its adventurous feet.

You know I always seek in what I see the manifestation of something beyond the present and tangible object; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not agree now.

But my business is to relate my own sensations, and not to attempt to inspire others with them." In the middle of August, Shelley left his wife at the Bagni di Lucca, and paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice.

He arrived at midnight in a thunderstorm.

"Julian and Maddalo" was the literary fruit of this excursion--a poem which has rightly been characterized by Mr.Rossetti as the most perfect specimen in our language of the "poetical treatment of ordinary things." The description of a Venetian sunset, touched to sadness amid all its splendour by the gloomy presence of the madhouse, ranks among Shelley's finest word-paintings; while the glimpse of Byron's life is interesting on a lower level.