ted on his
ribs.

He was the only human being I ever met with who had sufficient
self-restraint and resolution to resist this proneness to fatten: he
did so, and at Genoa, where he was last weighed, he was ten stone and
nine pounds, and looked much less. This was not from vanity about his
personal appearance, but from a better motive; and as, like Justice
Greedy, he was always hungry, his merit was the greater. Occasionally
he relaxed his vigilance, when he swelled apace.

I remember one of his old friends saying, "Byron, how well you are
looking!" If he had stopped there it had been well, but when he added,
"You are getting fat," Byron's brow reddened, and his eyes
flashed--"Do you call getting fat looking well, as if I were a hog?"
and, turning to me, he muttered, "The beast, I can hardly keep my
hands off him." The man who thus offended him was the husband of the
lady addressed as "Genevra," and the original of his "Zuleika," in the
_Bride of Abydos_. I don't think he had much appetite for his dinner
that day, or for many days, and never forgave the man who, so far from
wishing to offend, intended to pay him a compliment.

Byron said he had tried all sorts of experiments to stay his hunger,
without adding to his bulk. "I swelled," he said, "at one time to
fourteen stone, so I clapped the muzzle to my jaws, and, like the
hibernating animals, consumed my own fat."

He would exist on biscuits and soda-water for days together, then, to
allay the eternal hunger gnawing at his vitals, he would make up a
horrid mess of cold potatoes, rice, fish, or greens, deluged in
vinegar, and gobble it up like a famished dog. On either of these
unsavory dishes, with a biscuit and a glass or two of Rhine wine, he
cared not how sour, he called feasting sumptuously. Upon my observing
he might as well have fresh fish and vegetables, instead of stale, he
laughed and answered:

"I have an advantage over you, I have no palate; one thing is as good
as another to me."

"Nothing," I said, "disagrees with the natural man; he fasts and
gorges, his nerves and brain don't bother him; but if you wish to
live?--

"Who wants to live?" he replied, "not I. The Byrons are a short-lived
race on both sides, father and mother; longevity is hereditary: I am
nearly at the end of my tether. I don't care for death a ----; it is
her sting! I can't bear pain."

His habits and want of exercise damaged him, not drink. It must be
borne in mind, moreover, t