“I know not when I have been so much interested and amused, (said Byron,) as in the perusal of ― journal: it is one of the choicest productions I ever read, and is astonishing as being written by a minor, as I find he was under age when he penned it. The most piquant vein of pleasantry runs through it; the ridicules—and they are many—of our dear compatriots are touched with the pencil of a master; but what pleases me most is, that neither the reputation of man nor woman is compromised, nor any disclosures made that could give pain. He has admirably penetrated the secret of English ennui, (continued Byron,)—a secret that is one to the English only, as I defy any foreigner, blessed with a common share of intelligence, to come in contact with them without discovering it. The English know that they are ennuyés, but vanity prevents their discovering that they are ennuyeux, and they will be little disposed to pardon the person who enlightens them on this point. ― ― ought to publish this work (continued Byron), for two reasons: the first, that it will be sure to get known that he has written a piquant journal, and people will imagine it to be a malicious libel, instead of being a playful satire, as the English are prone to fancy the worst, from a consciousness of not meriting much forbearance; the second reason is, that the impartial view of their foibles, taken by a stranger who cannot be actuated by any of the little jealousies that influence the members of their own coteries, might serve to correct them, though I fear reflexion faite there is not much hope of this. It is an extraordinary anomaly, (said Byron,) that people who are really naturally inclined to good, as I believe the English are, and who have the advantages of a better education than foreigners receive, should practise more ill-nature and display more heartlessness than the inhabitants of any other country. This is all the effect of the artificial state of society in England, and the exclusive system has increased the evils of it ten-fold. We accuse the French of frivolity, (continued Byron,) because they are governed by fashion; but this extends only to their dress, whereas the English allow it to govern their pursuits, habits, and modes of thinking and acting: in short, it is the Alpha and Omega of all they think, do, or will: their society, residences, nay, their very friends, are chosen by this criterion, and old and tried friends, wanting its stamp, are voted de trop. Fashion admits women of more than dubious reputations, and well-born men with none, into circles where virtue and honour, not a-la-mode, might find it difficult to get placed; and if (on hearing the reputation of Lady this, or Mrs. that, or rather want of reputation, canvassed over by their associates) you ask why they are received, you will be told it is because they are seen everywhere—they are the fashion.—I have known (continued Byron) men and women in London received in the first circles, who, by their birth, talents, or manners, had no one claim to such a distinction, merely because they had been seen in one or two houses, to which, by some manoeuvring, they got the entrée; but I must add, they were not remarkable for good looks, or superiority in any way, for if they had been, it would have elicited attention to their want of other claims, and closed the doors of fashion against them. I recollect, (said Byron,) on my first entering fashionable life, being surprised at the (to me) unaccountable distincions I saw made between ladies placed in peculiar and precisely similar situations. I have asked some of the fair leaders of fashon, ‘Why do you exclude Lady ―, and admit Lady ―, as they are both in the same scrape?’ With that amiable indifference to cause and effect that distinguishes the generality of your sex, the answer has invariably been, ‘Oh! we admit Lady ― because all our set receive her; and exclude Lady ― because they will not.’ I have pertinaciously demanded, ‘Well, but you allow their claims are equal?’ and the reply has been, ‘Certainly; and we believe the excluded lady to be the better of the two.’ Mais que voulez-vous? she is not received, and the other is; it is all chance or luck; and this (continued Byron) is the state of society in London, and such the line of demarcation drawn between the pure and the pure, when chance or luck, as Lady ― honestly owned to me, decided whether a woman lost her caste or not. I am not much of a prude, (said Byron,) but I declare that, for the general good, I think that all women who had forfeited their reputations ought to lose their places in society; but this rule ought never to admit of an exception: it becomes an injustice and hardship when it does, and loses all effect as a warning or preventive. I have known young married women, when cautioned by friends on the probability of losing caste by such or such a step, quote the examples of Lady this, or Mrs. that, who had been more imprudent, (for imprudence is the new name for guilt in England,) and yet that one saw these ladies received everywhere, and vain were precepts with such examples. People may suppose (continued Byron) that I respect not morals, because unfortunately I have sometimes violated them: perhaps from this very circumstance I respect them the more, as we never value riches until our prodigality has made us feel their loss; and a lesson of prudence coming from him who had squandered thousands, would have more weight than whole pages written by one who had not personal experience: so I maintain that persons who have erred are most competent to point out errors. It is my respect for morals that makes me so indignant against its vile substitute cant, with which I wage war, and this the good-natured world chooses to consider as a sign of my wickedness. We are all the creatures of circumstance, (continued Byron;) the greater part of our errors are caused, if not excused, by events and situations over which we have had little control: the world see the faults, but they see not what led to them: therefore I am always lenient to crimes that have brought their own punishment while I am little disposed to pity those who think they atone for their own sins by exposing those of others, and add cant and hypocrisy to the catalogue of their vices. Let not a woman who has gone astray, without detection, affect to disdain a less fortunate though not less culpable female. She who is unblemished should pity her who has fallen, and she whose conscience tells her she is not spotless should show forbearance but it enrages me to see women whose conduct is, or has been, infinitely more blameable than that of the persons they denounce affecting a prudery towards others that they had not in the hour of need for themselves. It was this forbearance towards her own sex that charmed me in Lady Melbourne: she had always some kind interpretation for every action that would admit of one, and pity or silence when aught else was impracticable.”

“Lady ―, beautiful and spotless herself, always struck me as wanting that pity she could so well afford. Not that I ever thought her ill-natured or spiteful; but I thought there was a certain severity in her demarcations, that her acknowledged purity rendered less necessary. Do you remember my lines in the Giaour, ending with— No: gayer insects fluttering by Ne’er droop the wing o’er those that die; And lovelier things have mercy shown To every failing but their own; And every woe a tear can claim Except an erring sister’s shame.

“These lines were suggested by the conduct I witnessed in London from women to their erring acquaintances—a conduct that led me to draw the conclusion, that their hearts are formed of less penetrable stuff than those of men.”

Byron has not lived sufficiently long in England, and has left it at too young an age, to be able to form an impartial and just estimate of his compatriots. He was a busy actor, more than a spectator, in the circles which have given him an unfavourable impression; and his own passions were, at that period, too much excited to permit his reason to be unbiassed in the opinions he formed. In his hatred of what he calls cant and hypocrisy, he is apt to denounce as such all that has the air of severity; and which, though often painful in individual cases, is, on the whole, salutary for the general good of society. This error of Byron’s proceeds from a want of actual personal observation, for which opportunity has not been afforded him, as the brief period of his residence in England, after he had arrived at an age to judge, and the active part he took in the scenes around him, allowed him not to acquire that perfect knowledge of society, manners, and customs which is necessary to correct the prejudices that a superficial acquaintance with it is so apt to engender, even in the most acute observer, but to which a powerful imagination, prompt to jump at conclusions without pausing to trace cause and effect, is still more likely to fall into. Byron sees not that much of what he calls the usages of cant and hypocrisy are the fences that protect propriety, and that they cannot be invaded without exposing what it is the interest of all to preserve. Had he been a calm looker on, instead of an impassioned actor in the drama of English fashionable life, he would probably have taken a less harsh view of all that has so much excited his ire, and felt the necessity of many of the restraints which fettered him.

A two years' residence in Greece, with all the freedom and personal independence that a desultory rambling life admits of and gives a taste for,—in a country where civilization has so far retrogarded that its wholesome laws, as well as its refinements, have disappeared, leaving license to usurp the place of liberty,—was little calculated to prepare a young man of three-and-twenty for the conventional habits and restraints of that artificial state of society which extreme civilization and refinement beget. No wonder then that it soon became irksome to him, and that, like the unbroken courser of Arabia, when taken from the deserts where he had sported in freedom, he spurned the puny meshes which ensnared him, and pined beneath the trammels that intercepted his liberty.

Byron returned to England in his twenty-third year, and left it before he had completed his twenty-eighth, soured by disappointments and rendered reckless by a sense of injuries. “He who fears not, is to be feared,” says the proverb; and Byron, wincing under all the obloquy which malice and envy could inflict, fell that its utmost malignity could go no farther, and became fixed in a fearless braving of public opinion, which a false spirit of vengeance led him to indulge in, turning the genius, that could lave achieved the noblest ends, into the means of accomplishing those which were unworthy of if. His attacks on the world are like the war of the Titans against the Gods,—the weapons he aims fall back on limself. He feels that he has allowed sentiments of pique to influence and deteriorate his works; and that the sublime rassages in them, that now appear like gleams of sunshine flitting across the clouds hat sometimes obscure the bright luminary, might have been one unbroken blaze of light, had not worldly resentment and feelings dimmed their lustre.

This consciousness of misapplied genius has made itself felt in Byron, and will yet lead him to redeem the injustice he has done it; and when he has won the guerdon of the world’s applause, and satisfied that craving for celebrity which consumes him, reconciled to that world, and at peace with himself, he may yet win as much esteem for the man as he has hitherto elicited admiration for the poet. To satisfy Byron, the admiration must be unqualified; and, as I have told him, this depends on himself: he has only to choose a subject for his muse, in which not only received opinions are not wounded, but morality is inculcated; and his glowing genius, no longer tarnished by the stains that have previously blemished it, will shine forth with a splendour, and ensure that universal applause, which will content even his ambitious and aspiring nature. He wants some one to tell him what he might do, what he ought to do, and what so doing he would become, I have told him; but I have not sufficient weight or influence with him to make my representations effective; and the task would be delicate and difficult for a male friend to undertake, as Byron is pertinacious in refusing: to admit that his works have failed in morality, though in his heart I am sure he feels it.

Talking of some one who was said to have fallen in love, “I suspect (said Byron) that he must be indebted to your country for this phrase, ‘falling in love;’ it is expressive and droll: they also say falling ill; and, as both are involuntary, and, in general, equally calamitous, the expressions please me. Of the two evils, the falling ill seems to me to be the least; at all events I would prefer it; for as, according to philosophers, pleasure consists in the absence of pain, the sensations of returning health (if one does recover) must be agreeable; but the recovery from love is another affair, and resembles the awaking from an agreeable dream. Hearts are often only lent, when they are supposed to be given away (continued Byron); and are the loans for which people exact the most usurious interest. When the debt is called in, the borrower, like all other debtors, feels little obligation to the lender, and, having refunded the principal, regrets the interest he has paid. You see (said Byron) that, à l'Anglaise, I have taken a mercantile view of the tender passion; but I must add that, in closing the accounts, they are seldom fairly balanced, ‘e ciò sa ’l tuo dottore.’ There is this difference between the Italians and others, (said Byron,) that the end of love is not with them the beginning of hatred, which certainly is, in general, the case with the English, and, I believe, the French: this may be accounted for from their having less vanity; which is also the reason why they have less ill-nature in their compositions, for vanity, being always on the qui vive, up in arms, ready to resent the least offence offered to it, precludes good temper.”

I asked Byron if his partiality for the Italians did not induce him to overlook other and obvious reasons for their not beginning to hate when they ceased to love: first, the attachments were of such long duration that age arrived to quell angry feelings, and the gradations were so slow, from the first sigh of love to the yawn of expiring affection, as to be almost imperceptible to the parties; and the system of domesticating in Italy established a habit that rendered them necessary to each other. Then the slavery of serventism, the jealousies, carried to an extent that is unknown in England, and which exists longer than the passion that is supposed to excite, if not excuse, them, may tend to reconcile lovers to the exchange of friendship for love; and, rejoicing in their recovered liberty, they are more disposed to indulge feelings of complacency than hatred.