[125]
Notwithstanding, however, these counter evidences, I am much disposed
to believe that the representation of the state of heart in the
foregoing extract from Childe Harold may be regarded as the true one;
and that the notion of his being in love was but a dream that sprung
up afterwards, when the image of the fair Florence had become
idealised in his fancy, and every remembrance of their pleasant hours
among "Calypso's isles" came invested by his imagination with the warm
aspect of love. It will be recollected that to the chilled and sated
feelings which early indulgence, and almost as early disenchantment,
had left behind, he attributes in these verses the calm and
passionless regard, with which even attractions like those of Florence
were viewed by him. That such was actually his distaste, at this
period, to all real objects of love or passion (however his fancy
could call up creatures of its own to worship) there is every reason
to believe; and the same morbid indifference to those pleasures he had
once so ardently pursued still continued to be professed by him on his
return to England. No anchoret, indeed, could claim for himself much
more apathy towards all such allurements than he did at that period.
But to be _thus_ saved from temptation was a dear-bought safety, and,
at the age of three-and-twenty, satiety and disgust are but melancholy
substitutes for virtue.
The brig of war, in which they sailed, having been ordered to convoy a
fleet of small merchant-men to Patras and Prevesa, they remained, for
two or three days, at anchor off the former place.
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