Missolonghi is situated on the south side of the salt marsh or shallow, along the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth, nearly opposite to Patras.  It is a dull, and I should think an unwholesome place.  The marsh, for miles on each side, has only from a foot to two feet of water on it, but there is a channel for boats marked out by perches.  When I was there the weather was extremely wet, and I had no other opportunity of seeing the character of the adjacent country than during the intervals of the showers.  It was green and pastoral, with a short skirt of cultivation along the bottom of the hills.

Abrupt and rapid as the foregoing sketch of the journey through Albania has been, it is evident from the novelty of its circumstances that it could not be performed without leaving deep impressions on the susceptible mind of the poet.  It is impossible, I think, not to allow that far more of the wildness and romantic gloom of his imagination was derived from the incidents of this tour, than from all the previous experience of his life.  The scenes he visited, the characters with whom he became familiar, and above all, the chartered feelings, passions, and principles of the inhabitants, were greatly calculated to supply his mind with rare and valuable poetical materials.  It is only in this respect that the details of his travels are interesting.—Considered as constituting a portion of the education of his genius, they are highly curious, and serve to show how little, after all, of great invention is requisite to make interesting and magnificent poetry.

From Missolonghi the travellers passed over the Gulf of Corinth to Patras, then a rude, half-ruined, open town with a fortress on the top of a hill; and on the 4th of December, in the afternoon, they proceeded towards Corinth, but halted at Vostizza, the ancient Ægium, where they obtained their first view of Parnassus, on the opposite side of the gulf; rising high above the other peaks of that hilly region, and capped with snow.  It probably was during this first visit to Vostizza that the Address to Parnassus was suggested.

Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey
   Not in the frensy of a dreamer’s eye,
   Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
   But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky,
   In the wild pomp of mountain majesty!
   What marvel if I thus essay to sing?
   The humblest of thy pilgrims passing by
   Would gladly woo thine echoes with his string,
   Though from thy heights no more one muse will wave her wing.