However, the Guiccioli book did not want for patrons in the high places of literature.  The ’Blackwood’—­the old classic magazine of England; the defender of conservatism and aristocracy; the paper of Lockhart, Wilson, Hogg, Walter Scott, and a host of departed grandeurs—­was deputed to usher into the world this book, and to recommend it and its author to the Christian public of the nineteenth century.

The following is the manner in which ‘Blackwood’ calls attention to it:—­

’One of the most beautiful of the songs of Beranger is that addressed to his Lisette, in which he pictures her, in old age, narrating to a younger generation the loves of their youth; decking his portrait with flowers at each returning spring, and reciting the verses that had been inspired by her vanished charms:—­

   ’Lorsque les yeux chercheront sous vos rides
   Les traits charmants qui m’auront inspire,
   Des doux recits les jeunes gens avides,
   Diront:  Quel fut cet ami tant pleure? 
   De men amour peignez, s’il est possible,
   Vardeur, l’ivresse, et meme les soupcons,
   Et bonne vieille, an coin d’un feu paisible
   De votre ami repetez les chansons. 
   “On vous dira:  Savait-il etre aimable? 
   Et sans rougir vous direz:  Je l’aimais. 
   D’un trait mechant se montra-t-il capable? 
   Avec orgueil vous repondrez:  Jamais!’”

‘This charming picture,’ ‘Blackwood’ goes on to say, ’has been realised in the case of a poet greater than Beranger, and by a mistress more famous than Lisette.  The Countess Guiccioli has at length given to the world her “Recollections of Lord Byron.”  The book first appeared in France under the title of “Lord Byron juge par les Temoins de sa Vie,” without the name of the countess.  A more unfortunate designation could hardly have been selected.  The “witnesses of his life” told us nothing but what had been told before over and over again; and the uniform and exaggerated tone of eulogy which pervaded the whole book was fatal to any claim on the part of the writer to be considered an impartial judge of the wonderfully mixed character of Byron.

’When, however, the book is regarded as the avowed production of the Countess Guiccioli, it derives value and interest from its very faults. {113} There is something inexpressibly touching in the picture of the old lady calling up the phantoms of half a century ago; not faded and stricken by the hand of time, but brilliant and gorgeous as they were when Byron, in his manly prime of genius and beauty, first flashed upon her enraptured sight, and she gave her whole soul up to an absorbing passion, the embers of which still glow in her heart.

’To her there has been no change, no decay.  The god whom she worshipped with all the ardour of her Italian nature at seventeen is still the “Pythian of the age” to her at seventy.  To try such a book by the ordinary