"
Byron having laid aside _Don Juan_ for more than a year, in deference to
La Guiccioli, was permitted to resume it again, in July, 1822, on a
promise to observe the proprieties. Cantos vi.-xi. were written at Pisa.
Cantos xii.-xvi. at Genoa, in 1823. These latter portions of the poem were
published by John Hunt. His other works of the period are of minor
consequence. The _Age of Bronze_ is a declamation, rather than a satire,
directed against the Convention of Cintra and the Congress of Verona,
especially Lord Londonderry's part in the latter, only remarkable, from
its advice to the Greeks, to dread--
The false friend worse than the infuriate foe;
i.e. to prefer the claw of the Tartar savage to the paternal hug of the
great Bear--
Better still toil for masters, than await,
The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate.
In the _Island_--a tale of the mutiny of the "Bounty"--he reverts to the
manner and theme of his old romances, finding a new scene in the Pacific
for the exercise of his fancy. In this piece his love of nautical
adventure reappears, and his idealization of primitive life, caught from
Rousseau and Chateaubriand.
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