and marshes of Ravenna, I used to fancy that the comparison was
somewhat below the greatness of the subject; but there so grave a note
of solemnity and desolation is struck, the scale of Nature is so
large, and the serpents coiling in and out among the lily leaves and
flowers are so much in their right place, that they suggest a scene by
no means unworthy of Dante's conception.

Nor is Dante the only singer who has invested this wood with poetical
associations. It is well known that Boccaccio laid his story of
'Honoria' in the pine-forest, and every student of English literature
must be familiar with the noble tale in verse which Dryden has founded
on this part of the 'Decameron.' We all of us have followed Theodore,
and watched with him the tempest swelling in the grove, and seen the
hapless ghost pursued by demon hounds and hunter down the glades. This
story should be read while storms are gathering upon the distant sea,
or thunderclouds descending from the Apennines, and when the pines
begin to rock and surge beneath the stress of labouring winds. Then
runs the sudden flash of lightning like a rapier through the boughs,
the rain streams hissing down, and the thunder 'breaks like a whole
sea overhead.'

With the Pinetum the name of Byron will be for ever associated. During
his two years' residence in Ravenna he used to haunt its wilderness,
riding alone or in the company of friends. The inscription placed
above the entrance to the house he occupied alludes to it as one of
the objects which principally attracted the poet to the neighbourhood
of Ravenna: 'Impaziente di visitare l' antica selva, che inspirò già
il Divino e Giovanni Boccaccio.' We know, however, that a more
powerful attraction, in the person of the Countess Guiccioli,
maintained his fidelity to 'that place of old renown, once in the