ABSTRACT
Lord Byron swam the Hellespont to emulate Leander's athletic example, so some fifty years later Sydney Dobell mounted a seacoast near Naples to recapture the feelings Saint Paul must have experienced on his arrival in Italy. Both gestures were no doubt dramatic; but Byron's desire was propelled by a physical prowess which assured its fulfillment, whereas Dobell's saintlier ambition was frustrated by the hostility of earth itself — by the collapse of the ground beneath his feet and a sorry fall into a subterranean cavern.1
