ion, in a voice at once "thin and
veiled," a boisterous air of Rossini's, riding out with pistols
accompanied by his dogs, and sitting up half the night to write _Don
Juan_ over gin and water. He was living at the time with the Countess
Guiccioli, who had married a man four times her age, had obtained a
separation, and now lived as Byron's mistress, with her father and
brother in the same house.

That Hunt should have been willing to bring his wife and a growing
family under the same roof does not reflect much credit on him,
especially when he found that Byron was not averse to saying cynical
and even corrupting things to Hunt's boys, when Hunt himself was
absent. Mrs. Leigh Hunt took a stronger line; she cordially disliked
Byron from the first. On one occasion when Byron said to her that
Trelawny had been finding fault with his morals, Mrs. Leigh Hunt said
trenchantly that it was the first time she had ever heard of them.

Leigh Hunt soon perceived that he and Byron had very little in common.
Byron disliked his familiarity and his airs of equality; while he
himself was not long in discovering Byron to be egotistical to the
verge of insanity, childishly vain of his rank, ill-natured, jealous,
coarse, inconsiderate, disloyal, a blabber of secrets, mean, deceitful.
But the glamour of Byron's fame, the romance that surrounded him, his
rank, which Leigh Hunt valued almost pathetically, kept the amiable
invalid--for such Leigh Hunt was at this time--hanging on to Byron's
skirts and claiming his protection. The Review began with a flourish of
trumpets, but soon broke down; and finally the very uncongenial
partnership was dissolved.

One cannot pardon Leigh Hunt at any stage. He ought never to have
accepted the original invitation; he ought never to have retained the
undignified position of a sort of literary parasite. He endeavoured to
protect his own self-respect by adopting a tone of easy familiarity
with Byron, which only resulted in galling his host; and he ought not
to have written his very damaging reminiscences of the period, though
it is quite clear that he felt under no obligation whatever to Byron.

Still it is a deeply interesting piece of portraiture, and probably
substantially accurate. The painful fact is that Byron was a very
ill-bred person. He had drawn a prize in the lottery of life, and had
obtained, so to speak, by accident of birth, a position that gave him
fortuitously the consequence which numbers o