verflowing
suppuration of that satiety and loathing, which rendered Childe
Harold, in particular, so original, incomprehensible, and antisocial;
and bears testimony to the state of his feelings at that important
epoch, while he was yet upon the threshold of the world, and was
entering it with a sense of failure and humiliation, and premature
disgust. For, notwithstanding his unnecessary expositions concerning
his dissipation, it is beyond controversy, that at no time could it
be said he was a dissipated young man. That he indulged in
occasional excesses is true; but his habits were never libertine, nor
did his health or stamina permit him to be distinguished in
licentiousness. The declaration in which he first discloses his
sobriety, contains more truth than all his pretensions to his
father's qualities. "I took my gradations in the vices," says he, in
that remarkable confession, "with great promptitude, but they were
not to my taste; for my early passions, though violent in the
extreme, were concentrated, and hated division or spreading abroad.
I could have left or lost the whole world with or for that which I
loved; but, though my temperament was naturally burning, I could not
share in the common libertinism of the place and time without
disgust; and yet this very disgust, and my heart thrown back upon
itself, threw me into excesses perhaps more fatal than those from
which I shrunk, as fixing upon one at a time the passions, which,
spread among many, would have hurt only myself." This is vague and
metaphysical enough; but it bears corroborative intimations, that the
impression which he early made upon me was not incorrect. He was
vain of his experiments in profligacy, but they never grew to
habitude.

While he was engaged in the composition of his satire, he formed a
plan of travelling; but there was a great shortcoming between the
intention and the performance. He first thought of Persia; he
afterwards resolved to sail for India; and had so far matured this
project, as to write for information to the Arabic professor at
Cambridge; and to his mother, who was not then with him at Newstead,
to inquire of a friend, who had resided in India, what things would
be necessary for the voyage. He formed his plan of travelling upon
different reasons from those which he afterward gave out, and which
have been imputed to him. He then thought that all men should in
some period of their lives travel; he had at that time n