the local news of
the morning, mentioned that Lord Byron and Mr Hobhouse had come in
from Spain, and were to proceed up the Mediterranean in the packet.
He was not acquainted with either.

Hobhouse had, a short time before I left London,, published certain
translations and poems rather respectable in their way, and I had
seen the work, so that his name was not altogether strange to me.
Byron's was familiar--the Edinburgh Review had made it so, and still
more the satire of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, but I was not
conscious of having seen the persons of either.

On the following evening I embarked early, and soon after the two
travellers came on board; in one of whom I recognised the visitor to
the library, and he proved to be Lord Byron. In the little bustle
and process of embarking their luggage, his Lordship affected, as it
seemed to me, more aristocracy than befitted his years, or the
occasion; and I then thought of his singular scowl, and suspected him
of pride and irascibility. The impression that evening was not
agreeable, but it was interesting; and that forehead mark, the frown,
was calculated to awaken curiosity, and beget conjectures.

Hobhouse, with more of the commoner, made himself one of the
passengers at once; but Byron held himself aloof, and sat on the
rail, leaning on the mizzen shrouds, inhaling, as it were, poetical
sympathy, from the gloomy Rock, then dark and stern in the twilight.
There was in all about him that evening much waywardness; he spoke
petulantly to Fletcher, his valet; and was evidently ill at ease with
himself, and fretful towards others. I thought he would turn out an
unsatisfactory shipmate; yet there was something redeeming in the
tones of his voice, when, some time after he had indulged his sullen
meditation, he again addressed Fletcher; so that, instead of finding
him ill-natured, I was soon convinced he was only capricious.

Our passage to Sardinia was tardy, owing to calms; but, in other
respects, pleasant. About the third day Byron relented from his rapt
mood, as if he felt it was out of place, and became playful, and
disposed to contribute his fair proportion to the general endeavour
to wile away the tediousness of the dull voyage. Among other
expedients for that purpose, we had recourse to shooting at bottles.
Byron, I think, supplied the pistols, and was the best shot, but not
very pre-eminently so. In the calms, the jolly-boat was several
times lowered;