Page:Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron.pdf/111

On looking out from the balcony this morning with Byron, I observed his countenance change, and an expression of deep sadness steal over it. After a few minutes’ silence he pointed out to me a boat anchored to the right, as the one in which his friend Shelley went down, and he said the sight of it made him ill—“You should have known Shelley,” said Byron, “to feel how much I must regret him. He was the most gentle, most amiable, and least worldly-minded person I ever met; full of delicacy, disinterested beyond all other men, and possessing a degree of genius, joined to a simplicity as rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau idéal of all that is fine, high minded, and noble, and he acted up to this ideal even to the very letter. He had a most brilliant imagination, but a total want of worldly wisdom. I have seen nothing like him, and never shall again, I am certain. I never can forget the night that his poor wife rushed into my room at Pisa, with a face pale as marble, and terror impressed on her brow, demanding, with all the tragic impetuosity of grief and alarm, where was her husband! * Vain were all our efforts to calm her, a desperate sort of courage seemed to give her energy to confront the horrible truth that awaited her; it was the courage of despair. I have seen nothing in tragedy on the stage so