indulged. He says, in one of his most agreeable, off-hand` couplets in "Don Juan," after telling us what a poor inantimate thing life has become for him

man.

"So for a good old gentlemanly vice,

I think I shall take up with avarice."

This the public were not to believe. It is a specimen of the artifice noticed in another place. They were to regard it only as a pleasantry, issuing from a generous mouth. However, it was very true. He had already taken up with the vice, as his friends were too well aware; and this couplet was at once to baffle them with a sort of confession, and to secure the public against a suspicion of it. It was curious to see what mastery he suffered the weakest passions to have over him; as if his public fame and abstract superiority were to bear him out privately, in every thing. He confessed that he felt jealous of the smallest accomplishments. The meaning of this was, that supposing every one else, in all probability, to feel so, you were to give him credit for being candid on a point which others concealed; or if they were not, the confession was to strike you as a piece of extraordinary acknowledgment on the part of a great The whole truth of the matter was to be found in the indiscriminate admiration he received. Those who knew him, took him at his word. They thought him so little above the weakness, that they did not care to exhibit any such accomplishment before him. We have been told of authors who were jealous even of beautiful women, because they divided attention. I do not think" Lord Byron would have entertained a jealousy of this sort. He would have thought the women too much occupied with himself. But he would infallibly have been jealous, had the beautiful woman been a wit, or drawn a circle round her piano-forte. With men I have seen him hold the most childish contests for superiority; so childish, that had it been possible for him to divest himself of a sense of his pretensions and public character, they would/ have exhibited something of the conciliating simplicity of Goldsmith. He would then lay imaginary wagers; and in a style which you would not have looked for in high life, thrust out his chin, and give knowing, self-estimating nods of the head, half nod and half shake, such as boys

playing at chuck-farthing give, when they say, "Come; I tell you what now." A fat dandy who came upon us at Genoa, and pretended to be younger than he was, and to wear his own hair, discomposed him for the day. He declaimed against him in so deploring a tone, and uttered the word "wig" so often, that my two eldest boys, who were in the next room, were obliged to stifle their laughter.

His jealousy of Wordsworth and others, who were not town-poets, was more creditable to him, though he did not indulge it in the most becoming manner. He pretended to think worse of them than he did. He had the modesty one day to bring me a stanza, intended for "Don Juan," in which he had sneered at them all, adding, with respect to one of them, that nobody but myself thought highly of him. He fancied I should put up with this, for the sake of being mentioned in the poem, let the mention be what it might; an absurdity, which nothing but his own vanity had suggested. I told him, that I should be unable to consider the introduction of such a stanza as any thing but an affront, and that he had better not put it in. He said he would not, and kept his word. I am now sorry I did not let it go; for it would have done me honour with posterity, far from what he intended. He did not equally keep his word, when he promised me to alter what he had said respecting the cause of Mr. Keats's death. But I speak more of this circumstance hereafter. For Southey he had as much contempt as any man can well have for another, especially for one who can do him an injury. He thought him a washy writer, and a canting politician; half a mercenary, and half a moral coxcomb. He was sadly out, however, when he compared his generosities with those of the Lake poet, and gave himself the preference. Mr. Southey, from all that I have heard, is a truly generous man, and says nothing about it. Lord Byron was not a generous man; and, in what he did, he contrived either to blow a trumpet before it himself, or to see that others blew one for him. I speak of his conduct latterly. What he might have done, before he thought fit to put an end to his doubts respecting the superiority of being generous, I cannot say; but if you were to believe himself, he had a propensity to avarice from a child. At Harrow, he told me, he would save up his money, not as other

boys did, for the pleasure of some great purchase or jovial expense, but in order to look at it and count it. I was to believe as much of this, or in such a manner, as to do him honour for the confession; but, unluckily, it had become too much like the practice of his middle age, not to be believed entirely. It was too obvious a part of the predominant feature in his character,-which was an indulgence of his self-will and self-love united, denying himself no pleasure that could add to the intensity of his consciousness, and the means of his being powerful and effective, with a particular satisfaction in contributing as little as possible to the same end in others. His love of

notoriety was superior even to his love of money; which is giving the highest idea that can be entertained of it. But he was extremely anxious to make them go hand in hand. At one time he dashed away in England and got into debt, because he thought expense became him; but he looked to retrieving all this, and more, by marrying a fortune. When Shelley lived near him in Switzerland, he appeared to be really generous, because he had a generous man for his admirer, and one whose influence he felt extremely. Besides, Mr. Shelley had money himself, or the expectation of it; and he respected him the more, and was anxious to look well in his eyes on that account. In Italy, where a different mode of life, and the success of Beppo and Don Juan, had made him conclude that the romantic character was not necessary to fame, he shocked his companion one day, on renewing their intimacy, by asking him, whether he did not feel a real respect for a wealthy man, or, at least, a greater respect for the rich man of the company, than for any other? Mr. Shelley gave him what Napoleon would have called "a superb no." It is true, the same question might have been put at random to a hundred Englishmen; and all, if they were honest, might have answered "Yes;" but these would have come from the middling ranks, where the possession of wealth is associated with the idea of cle-> verness and industry. Among the privileged orders, where riches are inherited, the estimation is much more equivocal, the richest man there being often the idlest and stupidest. But Mr. Shelley had as little respect for the possession or accumulation of wealth under any cir

cumstances, as Lord Byron had the reverse; and he would give away hundreds with as much zeal for another man's comfort, as the noble Lord would willingly save a guinea even in securing his pleasures. Perhaps, at one period of his residence there, no man in Italy, certainly no Englishman, ever contrived to practise more rakery and economy at one and the same time. Italian women are not averse to accepting presents, or any other mark of kindness; but they can do without them, and his Lordship put them to the test. Presents, by way of showing his gratitude, or as another mode of interchanging delight and kindness between friends, he had long ceased to make. I doubt whether his fair friend, Madame Guiccioli, ever received so much as a ring or a shawl from him. It is true, she did not require it. She was happy to show her disinterestedness in all points unconnected with the pride of her attachment; and I have as little doubt, that he would assign this as a reason for his conduct, and say he was as happy to let her prove it. But to be a poet and a wit, and to have had a liberal education, and write about love and lavishment, and not to find it in his heart, after all, to be able to put a friend and a woman upon a footing of graceful comfort with him in so poor a thing as a money-matter,-these were the sides of his character, in which love, as well as greatness, found him wanting, and in which it could discern no relief to its wounded self-respect, but at the risk of a greater mortification. The love of money, the pleasure of receiving it, even the gratitude he evinced when it was saved him, had not taught him the only virtue upon which lovers of money usually found their claims to a good construction:-he did not like paying a debt, and would undergo pestering and pursuit to avoid it. what," cries the reader, "becomes then of the stories of his making presents of money and manuscripts, and his not caring for the profits of his writings, and his giving 10,000l. to the Greeks?" He did care for the profits of (what he wrote, and he reaped a great deal: but, as I have observed before, he cared for celebrity still more; and his presents, such as they were, were judiciously made to that end. "Good heavens!" said a fair friend to me the other day, who knew him well,-"if he had but

"But

foreseen that you would have given the world an ac-` count of him! What would he not have done to cut a figure in your eyes!" As to the Greeks, the present of 10,000l. was first of all well trumpeted to the world: it then became a loan of 10,0007.; then a loan of 60007.; and he told me in one of his incontinent fits of communication and knowingness, that he did not think he should "get off under 4000l." I know not how much was lent after all; but I have been told, that good securi-, ty was taken for it; and I was informed the other day, that the whole money had been repaid. He was so jealous of your being easy upon the remotest points connected with property, that if he saw you ungrudging even upon so small a tax on your liberality as the lending of books, he would not the less fidget and worry you in lending his own. He contrived to let you feel that you had got them, and would insinuate that you had treated them carelessly, though he did not scruple to make marks and dogs'-ears in yours. O Truth! what scrapes

of portraiture have you not got me into!

I believe there did exist one person to whom he would have been generous, if she pleased; perhaps was so. At all events, he left her the bulk of his property, and always spoke of her with the greatest esteem. This was his sister, Mrs. Leigh. He told me she used to call him "baby Byron!" It was easy to see, that of the two persons, she had by far the greater judgment: I will add, without meaning to impeach her womanhood, the more masculine sense. She has recorded him on his tomb as the author of "Childe Harold," which was not so judicious; but this may have been owing to a fit of affectionate spleen at "Don Juan," which she could not bear, and (I was told) would never speak of. She thought he had committed his dignity in it. I believe she was the only woman for whom he ever entertained a real respect; a feeling, which was mixed up perhaps with something of family self-love. The only man he professed to entertain a real friendship for, was Lord Clare. I conclude that his Lordship may be excepted from the number of friends whom he "libelled all round."

His temper was not good. Reading one day in Montaigne the confession of that philosopher and "Seigneur,"