own with me to Newstead. Hodgson will be
there, and a young friend, named Harness, the earliest and dearest
I ever had from the third form at Harrow to this hour. I can
promise you good wine, and, if you like shooting, a manor of 4000
acres, fires, books, your own free will, and my own very
indifferent company. 'Balnea, vina * *.'

"Hodgson will plague you, I fear, with verse;--for my own part I
will conclude, with Martial, 'nil recitabo tibi;' and surely the
last inducement is not the least. Ponder on my proposition, and
believe me, my dear Moore, yours ever,

"BYRON."

* * * * *

Among those acts of generosity and friendship by which every year of
Lord Byron's life was signalised, there is none, perhaps, that, for its
own peculiar seasonableness and delicacy, as well as for the perfect
worthiness of the person who was the object of it, deserves more
honourable mention than that which I am now about to record, and which
took place nearly at the period of which I am speaking. The friend,
whose good fortune it was to inspire the feeling thus testified, was Mr.
Hodgson, the gentleman to whom so many of the preceding letters are
addressed; and as it would be unjust to rob him of the grace and honour
of being, himself, the testimony of obligations so signal, I shall here
lay before my readers an extract from the letter with which, in
reference to a passage in one of his noble friend's Journals, he has
favoured me.

"I feel it incumbent upon me to explain the circumstances to which this
passage alludes, however private their nature. They are, indeed,
calculated to do honour to the memory of my lamented friend. Having
become involved, unfortunately, in difficulties and embarrassments, I
received from Lord Byron (besides former pecuniary obligations)
assistance, at the time in question, to the amount of a thousand pounds.
Aid of such magnitude was equally unsolicited and unexpected on my part;
but it was a long-cherished, though secret, purpose of my friend to
afford that aid; and he only waited for the period when he thought it
would be of most service. His own words were, on the occasion of
conferring this overwhelming favour, '_I always intended to do it_.'"

During all this time, and through the months of January and February,
his poem of "Childe Harold" was in its progress through the press; and
to the changes and additions which he ma