У нас: 141825 рефератів
Щойно додані Реферати Тор 100
Скористайтеся пошуком, наприклад Реферат        Грубий пошук Точний пошук
Вхід в абонемент


June 1823. The Liberal did not succeed financially, and the joint menage was a lamentable failure. Correspondence of Byron and some of his Contemporaries (1828) was Hunt's revenge for the slights and indignities which he suffered in Byron's service. Yachting was one of the chief amusements of the English colony at Pisa. A schooner, the "Bolivar," was built for Byron, and a smaller boat, the "Don Juan" re-named "Ariel," for Shelley. Hunt arrived at Pisa on the 1st of July. On the 8th of July Shelley, who had remained in Pisa on Hunt's account, started for a sail with his friend Williams and a lad named Vivian. The "Ariel" was wrecked in the Gulf of Spezia and Shelley and his companions were drowned. On the 16th of August Byron and Hunt witnessed the "burning of Shelley" on the seashore near Via Reggio. Byron told Moore that "all of Shelley was consumed but the heart." Whilst the fire was burning Byron swam out to the "Bolivar" and back to the shore. The hot sun and the violent exercise brought on one of those many fevers which weakened his constitution and shortened his life.

The Austrian Government would not allow the Gambas of the countess Guiccioli to remain at Pisa. As a half measure Byron took a villa for them at Montenero near Leghorn, but as the authorities were still dissatisfied they removed to Genoa. On reaching Genoa Byron took up his quarters with the Gambas at the Casa Saluzzo, "a fine old palazzo with an extensive view over the bay," and Hunt and his party at the Casa Negroto with Mrs Shelley. Life at Genoa was uneventful. Of Hunt and Mrs Shelley he saw as little as possible, and though his still unfinished poems were at the service of The Liberal, he did little or nothing to further its success. Each number was badly received. Byron had some reason to fear that his popularity was on the wane, and though he had broken with Murray and was offering Don Juan (cantos VI.-XII.) to John Hunt, the publisher of The Liberal, he meditated a "run down to Naples" and a recommencement of Childe Harold. There was a limit to his defiance of the "world's rebuke." Home politics and the congress of Verona (November-December 1822) suggested a satire entitled "The Age of Bronze" (published April 1, 1823). It is, as he said, "stilted," and cries out for notes, but it embodies some of his finest and most vigorous work as a satirist. By the middle of February (1823) he had completed The Island; or Christian and his Comrades (published June 26, 1823). The sources are Bligh's Narrative of the Mutiny on the Bounty, and Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands. Satire and tale are a reversion to his earlier method. The execution of The Island is hurried and unequal, but there is a deep and tender note in the love-story and the recital of the "feasts and loves and wars" of the islanders. The poetic faculty has been "softened into feeling" by the experience of life.


Сторінки: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10