From the same place, at the same date, he
announces to Murray the completion of the third canto of _Childe Harold_.
The productiveness of July is portentous. During that month he wrote the
_Monody on Sheridan, The Dream, Churchill's Grave_, the _Sonnet to Lake
Leman, Could I remount the River of my Years_, part of _Manfred,
Prometheus_, the _Stanzas to Augusta_, beginning,
My sister! My sweet sister! If a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
and the terrible dream of _Darkness_, which at least in the ghastly power
of the close, where the survivors meet by the lurid light of a dim altar
fire, and die of each other's hideousness, surpasses Campbell's _Last
Man_[1]. At Lausanne the poet made a pilgrimage to the haunts of Gibbon,
broke a sprig from his acacia-tree, and carried off some rose leaves from
his garden. Though entertaining friends, among them Mr. M.G. Lewis and
Scrope Davies, he systematically shunned "the locust swarm of English
tourists," remarking on their obtrusive platitudes; as when he heard one
of them at Chamouni inquire, "Did you ever see anything more truly rural?"
Ultimately he got tired of the Calvinistic Genevese--one of whom is said
to have swooned as he entered the room--and early in October set out with
Hobhouse for Italy.
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