burden on him; and it was not till he stood, companionless, on the shore
of the little island in the Aegean, that he found his spirit breathe
freely. If any stronger proof were wanting of his deep passion for
solitude, we shall find it, not many years after, in his own written
avowal, that, even when in the company of the woman he most loved, he
not unfrequently found himself sighing to be alone.

It was not only, however, by affording him the concentration necessary
for this silent drawing out of his feelings and powers, that travel
conduced so essentially to the formation of his poetical character. To
the East he had looked, with the eyes of romance, from his very
childhood. Before he was ten years of age, the perusal of Rycaut's
History of the Turks had taken a strong hold of his imagination, and he
read eagerly, in consequence, every book concerning the East he could
find.[2] In visiting, therefore, those countries, he was but realising
the dreams of his childhood; and this return of his thoughts to that
innocent time, gave a freshness and purity to their current which they
had long wanted. Under the spell of such recollections, the attraction
of novelty was among the least that the scenes, through which he
wandered, presented. Fond traces of the past--and few have ever retained
them so vividly--mingled themselves with the impressions of the objects
before him; and as, among the Highlands, he had often traversed, in
fancy, the land of the Moslem, so memory, from the wild hills of
Albania, now "carried him back to Morven."

While such sources of poetic feeling were stirred at every step, there
was also in his quick change of place and scene--in the diversity of men
and manners surveyed by him--in the perpetual hope of adventure and
thirst of enterprise, such a succession and variety of ever fresh
excitement as not only brought into play, but invigorated, all the