Besides the causes already enumerated as leading naturally to such a result, from the peculiarities by which, in most instances, these great labourers in the field of thought are characterised, there is also much, no doubt, to be attributed to an unluckiness in the choice of helpmates,—­dictated, as that choice frequently must be, by an imagination accustomed to deceive itself.  But from whatever causes it may have arisen, the coincidence is no less striking than saddening, that, on the list of married poets who have been unhappy in their homes, there should already be found four such illustrious names as Dante, Milton[58], Shakspeare[59], and Dryden; and that we should now have to add, as a partner in their destiny, a name worthy of being placed beside the greatest of them,—­Lord Byron.

I have already mentioned my having been called up to town in the December of this year.  The opportunities I had of seeing Lord Byron during my stay were frequent; and, among them, not the least memorable or agreeable were those evenings we passed together at the house of his banker, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, where music,—­followed by its accustomed sequel of supper, brandy and water, and not a little laughter,—­kept us together, usually, till rather a late hour.  Besides those songs of mine which he has himself somewhere recorded as his favourites, there was also one to a Portuguese air, “The song of war shall echo through our mountains,” which seemed especially to please him;—­the national character of the music, and the recurrence of the words “sunny mountains,” bringing back freshly to his memory the impressions of all he had seen in Portugal.  I have, indeed, known few persons more alive to the charms of simple music; and not unfrequently have seen the tears in his eyes while listening to the Irish Melodies.  Among those that thus affected him was one beginning “When first I met thee warm and young,” the words of which, besides the obvious feeling which they express, were intended also to admit of a political application.  He, however, discarded the latter sense wholly from his mind, and gave himself up to the more natural sentiment of the song with evident emotion.

On one or two of these evenings, his favourite actor, Mr. Kean, was of the party; and on another occasion, we had at dinner his early instructor in pugilism, Mr. Jackson, in conversing with whom, all his boyish tastes seemed to revive;—­and it was not a little amusing to observe how perfectly familiar with the annals of “The Ring[60],” and with all the most recondite phraseology of “the Fancy,” was the sublime poet of Childe Harold.

The following note is the only one, of those I received from him at this time, worth transcribing:—­

     “December 14. 1814.

     “My dearest Tom,