t so young when my father died, but that I perfectly
remember him, and had a very early horror of matrimony from the sight
of domestic broils: this feeling came over me very strongly at my
wedding. Something whispered me that I was sealing my own death-
warrant. I am a great believer in presentiments: Socrates's demon
was not a fiction; Monk Lewis had his monitor, and Napoleon many
warnings. At the last moment I would have retreated, could I have
done so; I called to mind a friend of mine, who had married a young,
beautiful, and rich girl, and yet was miserable; he had strongly
urged me against putting my neck in the same yoke."

For some time after the marriage things went on in the usual
matrimonial routine, until he was chosen into the managing committee
of Drury Lane; an office in which, had he possessed the slightest
degree of talent for business, he might have done much good. It was
justly expected that the illiterate presumption which had so long
deterred poetical genius from approaching the stage, would have
shrunk abashed from before him; but he either felt not the importance
of the duty he had been called to perform, or, what is more probable,
yielding to the allurements of the moment, forgot that duty, in the
amusement which he derived from the talents and peculiarities of the
players. No situation could be more unfit for a man of his
temperament, than one which exposed him to form intimacies with
persons whose profession, almost necessarily, leads them to
undervalue the domestic virtues.

It is said, that the course of life into which he was drawn after he
joined the managing committee of Drury Lane was not in unison with
the methodical habits of Lady Byron. But independently of outdoor
causes of connubial discontent and incompatibility of temper, their
domestic affairs were falling into confusion.

"My income at this period," says Lord Byron, "was small, and somewhat
bespoken. We had a house in town, gave dinner-parties, had separate
carriages, and launched into every sort of extravagance. This could
not last long; my wife's ten thousand pounds soon melted away. I was
beset by duns, and at length an execution was levied, and the
bailiffs put in possession of the very beds we had to sleep on. This
was no very agreeable state of affairs, no very pleasant scene for
Lady Byron to witness; and it was agreed she should pay her father a
visit till the storm had blown over, and some arrangement had b