Aurora, who in her indifference,
      Confounded him in common with the crowd
   Of flatterers, though she deemed he had more sense
      Than whispering foplings or than witlings loud,
   Commenced (from such slight things will great commence)
      To feel that flattery which attracts the proud,
   Rather by deference than compliment,
   And wins even by a delicate dissent.

   And then he had good looks:  that point was carried
      Nem. con. amongst the women.

. . . .

      Now, though we know of old that looks deceive,
   And always have done, somehow these good looks,
   Make more impression than the best of books.

   Aurora, who looked more on books than faces,
      Was very young, although so very sage: 
   Admiring more Minerva than the Graces,
      Especially upon a printed page. 
   But Virtue’s self, with all her tightest laces,
      Has not the natural stays of strict old age;
   And Socrates, that model of all duty,
   Owned to a penchant, though discreet for beauty.’

The presence of this high-minded, thoughtful, unworldly woman is described through two cantos of the wild, rattling ‘Don Juan,’ in a manner that shows how deeply the poet was capable of being affected by such an appeal to his higher nature.

For instance, when Don Juan sits silent and thoughtful amid a circle of persons who are talking scandal, the poet says,—­

   ’’Tis true, he saw Aurora look as though
      She approved his silence:  she perhaps mistook
   Its motive for that charity we owe,
      But seldom pay, the absent.

. . . .

   He gained esteem where it was worth the most;
      And certainly Aurora had renewed
   In him some feelings he had lately lost
      Or hardened,—­feelings which, perhaps ideal,
   Are so divine that I must deem them real:—­

   The love of higher things and better days;
      The unbounded hope and heavenly ignorance
   Of what is called the world and the world’s ways;
      The moments when we gather from a glance
   More joy than from all future pride or praise,
      Which kindled manhood, but can ne’er entrance
   The heart in an existence of its own
   Of which another’s bosom is the zone.

   And full of sentiments sublime as billows
      Heaving between this world and worlds beyond,
   Don Juan, when the midnight hour of pillows
      Arrived, retired to his.’ . . .

In all these descriptions of a spiritual unworldly nature acting on the spiritual and unworldly part of his own nature, every one who ever knew Lady Byron intimately must have recognised the model from which he drew, and the experience from which he spoke, even though nothing was further from his mind than to pay this tribute to the woman he had injured, and though before these lines, which showed how truly he knew her real character, had come one stanza of ribald, vulgar caricature, designed as a slight to her:—­