It rises to greatness by the fact that, underneath all
its lambent buffoonery, it is aflame with righteous wrath. Nowhere in such
space, save in some of the prose of Swift, is there in English so much
scathing satire.
CHAPTER IX.
1821-1823.
PISA--GENOA--DON JUAN.
Byron, having arrived at Pisa with his troop of carriages, horses, dogs,
fowls, servants, and a monkey, settled himself quietly in the Palazzo
Lanfranchi for ten months, interrupted only by a sojourn of six weeks in
the neighbourhood of Leghorn. His life in the old feudal building followed
in the main the tenour of his life at Ravenna. He rose late, received
visitors in the afternoons, played billiards, rode or practised with his
pistols, in concert with Shelley, whom he refers to at this time as "the
most companionable man under thirty" he had ever met. Both poets were good
shots, but Byron the safest; for, though his hand often shook, he made
allowance for the vibration, and never missed his mark. On one occasion he
set up a slender cane, and at twenty paces divided it with his bullet. The
early part of the evening he gave to a frugal meal and the society of La
Guiccioli--now apparently, in defiance of the statute of limitations,
established under the same roof--and then sat late over his verses.
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