A residence at Athens, day after day, is but little more interesting than in a common country town:  but afterwards, in reading either of the ancient or of the modern inhabitants, it is surprising to find how much local knowledge the memory had unconsciously acquired on the spot, arising from the variety of objects to which the attention had been directed.

The best of all Byron’s works, the most racy and original, are undoubtedly those which relate to Greece; but it is only travellers who have visited the scenes that can appreciate them properly.  In them his peculiar style and faculty are most eminent; in all his other productions, imitation, even mere translation may be often traced, and though, without question, everything he touched became transmuted into something more beautiful and precious, yet he was never so masterly as in describing the scenery of Greece, and Albanian manners.  In a general estimate of his works, it may be found that he has produced as fine or finer passages than any in his Grecian poems; but their excellence, either as respects his own, or the productions of others, is comparative.  In the Grecian poems he is only truly original; in them the excellence is all his own, and they possess the rare and distinguished quality of being as true to fact and nature, as they are brilliant in poetical expression.  Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is the most faithful descriptive poem which has been written since the Odyssey; and the occasional scenes introduced into the other poems, when the action is laid in Greece, are equally vivid and glowing.

When I saw him at Athens, the spring was still shrinking in the bud.  It was not until he returned from Constantinople in the following autumn, that he saw the climate and country with those delightful aspects which he has delineated with so much felicity in The Giaour and The Corsair.  It may, however, be mentioned, that the fine description of a calm sunset, with which the third canto of The Corsair opens, has always reminded me of the evening before his departure from Athens, owing to the circumstance of my having, in the course of the day, visited the spot which probably suggested the scene described.

It was the 4th of March, 1810; the Pylades sloop of war came that morning into the Piraeus, and landed Dr Darwin, a son of the poet, with his friend, Mr Galton, who had come out in her for a cruise.  Captain Ferguson, her commander, was so kind as to offer the English then in Athens, viz., Lord Byron, Mr Hobhouse, and myself, a passage to Smyrna.  As I had not received my luggage from Specia, I could not avail myself of the offer, but the other two did:  I accompanied Captain Ferguson, however, and Dr Darwin, in a walk to the Straits of Salamis; the ship, in the meantime, after landing them, having been moored there.