yron--His Sorrow--
His Affair with Mr Moore--Their Meeting at Mr Rogers's House, and
Friendship

Lord Byron arrived in London about the middle of July, 1811, having
been absent a few days more than two years. The embarrassed
condition in which he found his affairs sufficiently explains the
dejection and uneasiness with which he was afflicted during the
latter part of his residence in Greece; and yet it was not such as
ought to have affected him so deeply, nor have I ever been able to
comprehend wherefore so much stress has been laid on his supposed
friendlessness. In respect both to it and to his ravelled fortune, a
great deal too much has been too often said; and the manliness of his
character has suffered by the puling.

His correspondence shows that he had several friends to whom he was
much attached, and his disposition justifies the belief that, had he
not been well persuaded the attachment was reciprocal, he would not
have remained on terms of intimacy with them. And though for his
rank not rich, he was still able to maintain all its suitable
exhibition. The world could never regard as an object of compassion
or of sympathy an English noble, whose income was enough to support
his dignity among his peers, and whose poverty, however grievous to
his pride, caused only the privation of extravagance. But it cannot
be controverted, that there was an innate predilection in the mind of
Lord Byron to mystify everything about himself: he was actuated by a
passion to excite attention, and, like every other passion, it was
often indulged at the expense of propriety. He had the infirmity of
speaking, though vaguely, and in obscure hints and allusions, more of
his personal concerns than is commonly deemed consistent with a
correct estimate of the interest which mankind take in the cares of
one another. But he lived to feel and to rue the consequences: to
repent he could not, for the cause was in the very element of his
nature. It was a blemish as incurable as the deformity of his foot.

On his arrival in London, his relation, Mr Dallas, called on him, and
in the course of their first brief conversation his Lordship
mentioned that he had written a paraphrase of Horace's Art of Poetry,
but said nothing then of Childe Harold, a circumstance which leads me
to suspect that he offered him the slighter work first, to enjoy his
surprise afterward at the greater. If so, the result answered the
intent. Mr Dallas carried h