sometimes fall out of the boat, as if by accident, when the dog would seize him, and drag him to the shore. On losing his dog, in the autumn of 1808, his lordship caused a monument to be erected, in commemoration of his attachment, with an inscription, from which we extract the following lines:

"Ye who, perchance, behold this simple urn,

Pass on-it honours none you wish to mourn ;-
To mark a friend's remains these stones arise :-
I never knew but one,-and here he lies."

On arriving at the age of manhood, Lord Byron embarked at Falmouth for Lisbon, and from thence proceeded across the Peninsula to the Mediterranean, in company with Mr. Hobhouse. The travels of his lordship are described in "Childe Harold" and the Notes. It is somewhat singular, that his lordship should then have had a narrow escape from a fever in the vicinity of the place where his life terminated.

"When, in 1810,” he says, "after the departure of my friend, Mr. Hobhouse, for England, I was seized with a severe fever in the Morea, these men (Albanians) saved my life, by frightening away my physicians, whose throats they

threatened to cut, if I was not cured within a certain time. To this consolatory assurance of posthumous retribution, and a resolute refusal of Dr. Romanelli's prescriptions, I attribute my recovery. I had left my last remaining English servant at Athens. My dragoman, or interpreter, was as ill as myself, and my poor arnaouts nursed me with an attention which would have done honour to civilization."

While the Salsette frigate, in which Lord Byron was a passenger to Constantinople, lay in the Dardanelles, a discourse arose among some of the officers respecting the practicability of swimming across the Hellespont. Lord Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead agreed to make the trial. They accordingly attempted the enterprise on the 3rd of May, 1810. The following is the account given by Lord Byron:

"The whole distance from Abydos, the place where we started, to our landing at Sestos, on the other side, including the length we were carried by the current, was computed, by those on board the frigate, at upwards of four English miles, though the actual breadth is barely one. The rapidity of the current is such, that no boat can row directly across it; and it may, in

+

measure, be estimated, from the circumstance of the whole distance being accomplished by one of the party in an hour and five, and by another in an hour and ten, minutes. The water was extremely cold, from the melting of the mountain snows. About three weeks before, we had made an attempt; but having ridden all the way from the Troad the same morning, and the water being of an icy chillness, we found it necessary to postpone the completion till the frigate anchored between the castles, when we swam the Straits, as just stated, entering a considerable way above the European, and landing below the Asiatic, fort. Chevalier says, that a young Jew swam the same distance for his mistress; and Olivier mentions its having also been done by a Neapolitan; but our Consul at Tarragona remembered neither of those circumstances, and tried to dissuade us from the attempt. A number of the Salsette's crew were known to have accomplished a greater distance; and the only thing that surprised me was, that, as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander's story, no traveller had ever endeavoured to ascertain its practicability."

This notable adventure was, however, followed by a fit of the ague.

CHAUCER.

Of the history of Geoffrey Chaucer, who has been called "the Morning Star of English Poetry," and whom his contemporaries and immediate successors denominate "the flower of eloquence,"-"superlative in eloquence," &c. it is astonishing that we should know almost nothing. His very descent is involved in impenetrable obscurity; for while one of his biographers asserts that he was of a noble stock, another declares that he was the son of a knight; a third, that his father was a vintner, and a fourth, that he was a merchant: there is a fifth opinion, which seems best entitled to credit, viz. that nothing can be said with any certainty respecting his origin.

The place of his birth, likewise, is equally a matter of dispute; for while some maintain, and, apparently, on his own authority, that he was born in London, others have brought what, to them, have appeared very conclusive arguments, that he was a Berkshire man; while a