Alfieri, before his dramatic genius had yet unfolded itself, used to
pass hours, as he tells us, in this sort of dreaming state, gazing upon
the ocean:--"Après le spectacle un de mes amusemens, à Marseille, était
de me baigner presque tous les soirs dans la mer. J'avais trouvé un
petit endroit fort agréable, sur une langue de terre placée à droite
hors du port, où, en m'asseyant sur le sable, le dos appuyé contre un
petit rocher qui empêchait qu'on ne pût me voir du côté de la terre, je
n'avais plus devant moi que le ciel et la mer. Entre ces deux immensités
qu'embellissaient les rayons d'un soleil couchant, je passai en rêvant
des heures délicieuses; et là, je serais devenu poëte, si j'avais su
écrire dans une langue quelconque."]

[Footnote 2: But a few months before he died, in a conversation with
Maurocordato at Missolonghi, Lord Byron said--"The Turkish History was
one of the first books that gave me pleasure when a child; and I believe
it had much influence on my subsequent wishes to visit the Levant, and
gave perhaps the oriental colouring which is observed in my
poetry."--COUNT GAMBA's _Narrative_.

In the last edition of Mr. D'Israeli's work on "the Literary Character,"
that gentleman has given some curious marginal notes, which he found
written by Lord Byron in a copy of this work that belonged to him. Among
them is the following enumeration of the writers that, besides Rycaut,
had drawn his attention so early to the East:--

"Knolles, Cantemir, De Tott, Lady M.W. Montague, Hawkins's Translation
from Mignot's History of the Turks, the Arabian Nights, all travels, or
histories, or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, as well
as Rycaut, before I was _ten years old_. I think the Arabian Nights