in some ways. He did not mind dipping his hand into a
friendly pocket, and he had a way of flinging himself helplessly upon
the good nature of his friends, a want of dignity in the way he
accepted their assistance, which went far to justify the identification
of him with the very disagreeable portrait which Dickens drew of him,
as Harold Skimpole in _Bleak House_. But for all that he was an
affectionate, candid, and eminently placable person, and if it is true
that he darkened the shadows of Byron's temperament, and insisted too
strongly on his undesirable qualities, there is no reason to think that
the portrait he drew of Byron was not in the main a true one; and it
may be added that a vast amount of generosity and nobility require to
be thrown into the opposite scale before Byron can be rehabilitated or
made worthy of the least admiration and respect.

Byron had invited Leigh Hunt out to Italy, with the design of
producing, with his assistance, a monthly Review of a literary type.
Leigh Hunt came out with his wife and family, and accepted quarters
under Byron's roof. Byron had already tired of the scheme and repented
of his generosity. Leigh Hunt avers that Byron was an innately
avaricious man, and that, though he occasionally lavished money on some
favourite scheme, it was only because, though he loved money much, he
loved notoriety more. The good angel of the situation was Shelley, who
really made all the arrangements for Hunt's sojourn and presented him
with the necessary furniture for his rooms. Shelley was certainly
entirely indifferent to money, and profusely generous. He had begun by
admiring Byron, with all the enthusiasm of hero-worship, but a closer
acquaintance had revealed much that was distasteful and even repugnant
to him, and it may safely be said that if he had lived he would soon
have withdrawn from Byron's society. Shelley's ideas of morality were
not conventional; his affection and enthusiasm for people burnt
fiercely and waned, yet when he sinned, he sinned through a genuine
passion. But Byron, according to Leigh Hunt, was a cold-blooded
libertine, and had no conception of what love meant, except as a merely
animal desire, which he abundantly gratified.

The awkward _menage_ was established. Byron was at the Casa Lanfranchi
at Pisa, and gave Leigh Hunt the ground floor. Leigh Hunt describes him
as lounging about half the day in a nankeen jacket and white duck
trousers, singing in a swaggering fash