spirits, out of humour with myself, and all the world, except you.. I hope you will excuse this Hypocondriac epistle, as I never was in such low spirits in my life.

(1805, April 4. Letter 20, to the Hon. Augusta Byron, Vol. I., p. 56.)

Your efforts to reanimate my sinking spirits will, I am afraid, fail in their effect, for my melancholy proceeds from a very different cause to that which you assign, as, my nerves were always of the strongest texture.—I will not, however, pretend to say I possess that Gaieté de Coeur which formerly distinguished me, but as the diminution of it arises from what you could not alleviate, and might possibly be painful, you will excuse the Disclosure. Suffice it to know, that it cannot spring from Indisposition, as my Health was never more firmly established than now, nor from the subject on which I lately wrote, as that is in a promising Train, and even were it otherwise, the Failure would not lead to Despair. You know me too well to think it is Love; and I have had no quarrel or dissension with Friend or enemy, you may therefore be easy, since no unpleasant consequence will be produced from the present Sombre cast of my temper.

(1806, January 7. Letter 46, to the Hon. Augusta Byron, Vol. I., p. 93.)

It can hardly be expected the effusions of a boy (and most of these pieces have been produced at an early period) can derive much merit from the subject or composition. Many of them were written under

great depression of spirits, and during severe indisposition :-hence the gloomy turn of the ideas.

(1807, March 6. Letter 67, to William Bankes, Vol. I., p. 121.)

Hobhouse and your humble are still here. Hobhouse hunts, etc., and I do nothing; we dined the other day with a neighbouring Esquire (not Collet of Staines), and regretted your absence, as the Bouquet of Staines was scarcely to be compared to our last "feast of reason." You know, laughing is the sign of a rational animal; so says D' Smollett. I think so too, but unluckily my spirits don't always keep pace with my opinions. I had not so much scope for risibility the other day as I could have wished, for I was seated near a woman, to whom, when a boy, I was as much attached as boys generally are, and more than a man should be. I knew this before I went, and was determined to be valiant, and converse with sang froid; but instead I forgot my valour and my nonchalance, and never opened my lips even to laugh, far less to speak, and the lady [Mr Chaworth Masters] was almost as absurd as myself, which made both the object of more observation than if we had conducted ourselves with easy indifference. You will think all this great nonsense; if you had seen it, you would have thought it still more ridiculous. What fools we are! We cry for a plaything, which, like children, we are never satisfied with till we break open, though [un]like them we cannot get rid of it by putting it in the fire.

(1808, November 3. Letter 102, to Francis

Hodgson, Vol. I., p. 197.)

Your letter [alluding to the deaths of M" Byron and of Matthews] gives me credit for more acute feelings than I possess; for though I feel tolerably miserable, yet I am at the same time subject to a kind of hysterical merriment, or rather laughter without merriment, which I can neither account for nor conquer, and yet I do not feel relieved by it; but an indifferent person would think me in excellent spirits. "We must forget these things," and have recourse to our old selfish comforts, or rather comfortable selfishness.

(1811, August 21. Letter 167, to R. C. Dallas, Vol. I., p. 333.)

You must excuse my being a little cynical, knowing how my temper was tried in my Non-age; the manner in which I was brought up must necessarily have broken a meek Spirit, or rendered a fiery one ungovernable; the effect it has had on mine I need not state.

However, buffeting with the World has brought me a little to reason, and two years' travel in distant and barbarous countries has accustomed me to bear privations, and consequently to laugh at many things which would have made me angry before. But I am wandering-in short, I only want to assure you that I love you, and that you must not think I am indifferent, because I don't show my affection in the usual way.

(1811, August 30. Letter 174, to the Hon. Augusta Leigh, Vol. II., p. 13.)

I am very sensible of your good wishes, and,

THE CHOIR-BOY'S DEATH

49

indeed, I have need of them. My whole life has been at variance with propriety, not to say decency; my circumstances are become involved; my friends are dead or estranged, and my existence is a dreary void. (1811, September 7. Letter 180, to R. C. Dallas, Vol. II., p. 29.)

I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times [a choir-boy at Cambridge, called Edleston, whom Byron had saved from being drowned]; but "I have almost forgot the taste of grief," and "supped full of horrors" till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge in their families; I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am indeed very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility.

(1811, October 11. Letter 197, to R. C. Dallas, Vol. II., p. 52.)

In a morning I am always sullen, and to-day is as sombre as myself. Rain and mist are worse than a Sirocco, particularly in a beef-eating and beer-drinking country.

(1811, December 9. Letter 212, to William Harness, Vol. II., p. 81.)

D

I wrote you an answer to your last, which, on reflection, pleases me as little as it probably has pleased yourself. I will not wait for your rejoinder; but proceed to tell you, that I had just then been greeted with an epistle of * *'s, full of his petty grievances, and this at the moment when (from circumstances it is not necessary to enter upon) I was bearing up against recollections to which his imaginary sufferings are as a scratch to a cancer. These things combined, put put me out of humour with him and all mankind. The latter part of my life has been a perpetual struggle against affections which embittered the earliest portion; and though I flatter myself I have in a great measure conquered them, yet there moments (and this was one) when I am as foolish as formerly. I never said so much before, nor had I said this now, if I did not suspect myself of having been rather savage in my letter, and wish to inform you this much of the cause. You know I am not one of your dolorous gentlemen: so now let us laugh again. (1811, December 15. Letter 217, to William Harness, Vol. II., p. 89.)

are

I look upon myself as a very facetious personage and may appeal to most of my acquaintance (L M. for instance) in proof of my assertion. Nobody laughs more, and though your friend Joanna Baillie says somewhere that "Laughter is the child of misery,' I do not believe her (unless indeed in a hysteric), tho' I think it is sometimes the parent.

(1813, September 6. Correspondence with

Miss Milbanke. Letter 2, Vol. III., p. 399.)