no personal experience. There are, indeed, no limits to the creative
power of genius. But it is perhaps the practical politician who will
be most interested by the chapters in which Pausanias explains his
policy, or defends his position.

In publishing a romance which its author has left unfinished, I may
perhaps be allowed to indicate briefly what I believe to have been
the general scope of its design, and the probable progress of its
narrative.

The "domestic interest" of that narrative is supplied by the story of
Cleonice: a story which, briefly told by Plutarch, suggests one of
the most tragic situations it is possible to conceive. The pathos and
terror of this dark weird episode in a life which history herself
invests with all the character of romance, long haunted the
imagination of Byron; and elicited from Goethe one of the most
whimsical illustrations of the astonishing absurdity into which
criticism sometimes tumbles, when it "o'erleaps itself and falls o'
the other---."

Writing of Manfred and its author, he says, "There are, properly
speaking, two females whose phantoms for ever haunt him; and which,
in this piece also, perform principal parts. One under the name of
Astarte, the other without form or actual presence, and merely a
voice. Of the horrid occurrence which took place with the former, the
following is related:--When a bold and enterprising young man, he won
the affections of a Florentine lady. Her husband discovered the amour,
and murdered his wife. But the murderer was the same night found dead
in the street, and there was no one to whom any suspicion could be
attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, and _these spirits haunted