called Byron’s Path, where he was wont to ride.
Everybody here, indeed, knows of Byron; and I think
his memory is more secure than any saint of them all
in their stone boxes, partly because his poetry has
celebrated the region, perhaps rather from the perpetuated
tradition of his generosity. No foreigner was
ever so popular as he while he lived at Ravenna.
At least, the people say so now, since they find it
so profitable to keep his memory alive and to point
out his haunts. The Italians, to be sure, know
how to make capital out of poets and heroes, and are
quick to learn the curiosity of foreigners, and to
gratify it for a compensation. But the evident
esteem in which Byron’s memory is held in the
Armenian monastery of St. Lazzaro, at Venice, must
be otherwise accounted for. The monks keep his
library-room and table as they were when he wrote
there, and like to show his portrait, and tell of
his quick mastery of the difficult Armenian tongue.
We have a notable example of a Person who became a
monk when he was sick; but Byron accomplished too
much work during the few months he was on the Island
of St. Lazzaro, both in original composition and in
translating English into Armenian, for one physically
ruined and broken.
The pilgrim to Ravenna, who has any idea of what is
due to the genius of Dante, will be disappointed when
he approaches his tomb. Its situation is in a
not very conspicuous corner, at the foot of a narrow
street, bearing the poet’s name, and beside the
Church of San Francisco, which is interesting as containing
the tombs of the Polenta family, whose hospitality
to the wandering exile has rescued their names from
oblivion. Opposite the tomb is the shabby old
brick house of the Polentas, where Dante passed many
years of his life. It is tenanted now by all
sorts of people, and a dirty carriage-shop in the
courtyard kills the poetry of it. Dante died in
1321, and was at first buried in the neighboring church;
but this tomb, since twice renewed, was erected, and
his body removed here, in 1482. It is a square
stuccoed structure, stained light green, and covered
by a dome,—a tasteless monument, embellished
with stucco medallions, inside, of the poet, of Virgil,
of Brunetto Latini, the poet’s master, and of
his patron, Guido da Polenta. On the sarcophagus
is the epitaph, composed in Latin by Dante himself,
who seems to have thought, with Shakespeare, that
for a poet to make his own epitaph was the safest
thing to do. Notwithstanding the mean appearance
of this sepulcher, there is none in all the soil of
Italy that the traveler from America will visit with
deeper interest. Near by is the house where Byron
first resided in Ravenna, as a tablet records.
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